Betty Gravlin, author of free e-books at Barnes and Noble and Smashwords.com.

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Start Praying Now!!!Abortion Stance Key to ConfirmationIn an announcement Tuesday night, President Bush picked Roberts to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (search). He is seen as a solid conservative who has done little to give Democrats much cause for complaint.http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163028,00.htmlThe rabid anti-life forces will have a field day with this nomination. The fate of Christianity in this country is at stake. John Glover Roberts, Jr. is a practicing Catholic! (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Roberts,_Jr.)

Start Fasting Now!!!Al-Qaida's U.S. Nuclear Targets"Al-Qaida's prime targets for launching nuclear terrorist attacks are the nine U.S. cities with the highest Jewish populations, according to captured leaders and documents.""The optimal dates for the attacks are Aug. 6, the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Sept. 11 and May 14, the anniversary of the re-creation of the state of Israel in 1948. No specific year has been suggested, however, this Aug. 6 represents the 60th anniversary of the Hiroshima attack."The cities chosen as optimal targets are New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Boston and Washington, D.C. New York and Washington top the preferred target list for al-Qaida leadership.http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45313

FDA Issues Infection Warning on Abortion PillWASHINGTON — The government warned doctors Tuesday to be on the lookout for rare but deadly infections in women using the abortion pill RU-486 (search), citing two more deaths after its use.http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163032,00.html

I've been busy taking a class on Morality this summer for my certificate in Lay Ministry. I'm getting a lot out of it. Vatican II replaced the "morality of obligation and duty" with "call to holiness" and "freedom for excellence" according to our textbook. I liked the explaination of the difference between joy and pleasure as the motivators of behavior. Happiness is the goal of a moral life, but it is the joy of the Lord that satisfies our hearts, not a series of pleasurable events.These insights are mind-blowing for me!For example, this is what I wrote for one of my assignments:Insights on collectivism (Marxist communism)CCC 1885 "The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of collectivism." Why is the Church opposed to collectivism? This article explains what is wrong with this thinking.Nietzsche: A Precursor to Hitler?http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Commentary/Nietzsche.htmThe appellation of "communism" comes from the Latin root communis, which means "group" living. Fascism is a derivation of the Italian word fascio, which is translated as "bundle" or "group." Both fascism and communism are forms of coercive group living, or more succinctly, collectivism. The only substantial difference between the two is fascism's limited observance of private property rights, which is ostensible at best given its susceptibility to rigid government regulation. Nazism (a variant of fascism) is derivative of Marxism. The historical conflicts between communism and fascism were merely feuds between two socialist totalitarian camps, not two dichotomously related forces. Both tangibly represent the Nietzschean concept of the "human herd," a societal paradigm that subordinates the individual to the collective. Nietzschean philosophy comprises an ideational continuum binding Hitler, Marx, and other socialist totalitarians... "

"In addition to the continuity of political and social thought that pervaded totalitarian socialism, Nietzsche also provided a religious component. The infamous declaration, "God is dead," is but a segue for the introduction of a new god. This god has had numerous manifestations, as is evidenced by the following delineation by W. Warren Wagar:

Nineteenth-and early twentieth-century thought teems with time-bound emergent deities. Scores of thinkers preached some sort of faith in what is potential in time, in place of the traditional Christian and mystical faith in a power outside of time. Hegel's Weltgeist, Comte's Humanite, Spencer's organismic humanity inevitably improving itself by the laws of evolution, Nietzsche's doctrine of superhumanity, the conception of a finite God given currency by J.S. Mill, Hastings Rashdall, and William James, the vitalism of Bergson and Shaw, the emergent evolutionism of Samuel Alexander and Lloyd Morgan, the theories of divine immanence in the liberal movement in Protestant theology, and du Nouy's telefinalism--all are exhibits in evidence of the influence chiefly of evolutionary thinking, both before and after Darwin, in Western intellectual history. The faith of progress itself--especially the idea of progress as built into the evolutionary scheme of things--is in every way the psychological equivalent of religion. (Wagar, 106 -07)"

My comments:Superhumanity means that Nietzsche believed in preventing the "unhealthy" from procreating and in euthanasia for those he thought were less than perfect.This kind of thinking is what has led to abortion, free contraception from Planned Parenthood, and the "mercy killing" of disabled Terri Schavio. This is not a slippery slope I want our country to be going down. Christianity is about the only institution standing in the way of these ideas. The USA won the war against Hitler, but his ideas have infected our society to an alarming degree.